


Once I Had Dreams, Now They're Obsessions

by awkwardeye



Series: Second POV [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 09:04:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8280344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: Kylo Ren becomes infatuated with one of the natives of a village near where he trains





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to the song 'Where I Want to Be' and it made me think of Kylo Ren and his fall from the light / rise to power also i was going to include this in my other thing, but it was kinda long so i just ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s all in the way his eyes jump: irides swinging in sweeping arches from here to there distrustfully. Never looking back. Better to stop now, he thinks, and take a moment to survey the scene than pause and turn back to make sure he’s safe, to make sure he’s still whole. Figuratively, of course. He’d rather not traverse the written pages of his legacy now, not yet when the ink is still fresh and old at once.

Kylo doesn’t meet his own gaze in the water, but grips the edges of the basin with white, shaking digits as he stares blankly at himself. Earlier, he caught someone smiling while they worked in town and, realizing he hadn’t done the same in so long, he attempted to mimic the expression. But his visage was sickly, his grin sinister and, though he reveled in the foreboding suggestion of his smile, he’d grown nauseous at the sight of the smirk curling his lips. In that moment, he was reminded why he doesn’t turn back, sentimental, and imitate himself.

And why should he? Every breath is another closer to his destiny. He’s so close to greatness - better than he is now - and, yet, he regrets and doesn’t at the same time. Right now, he’s the slate filling with words to be hallowed tomorrow. Today, he’s only writing. Today, he’s only learning. But he’s already moulded, already being beaten into pieces and built again. Now, he thinks of his previous name and it feels foreign even hanging abstract in his mind. And there’s always the threat of forces pulling him back and away from everything he’s wanted since he knew he could desire such.

In the village, Kylo contrasts spectacularly with the natives. His robes grow more tattered with each appearance and, in a place brimming with happiness and joy, he’s always so dull, glum. His face is stone, his hands are flames, and his body is a blade: cutting and lithe. There’s a cloud around him though he only enters this heaven among hells alone.

The weather is extreme. Floods or droughts. The floods bring a multitude of sliding mud that threaten to topple him when he leaves his abode that is little more than a cave. The droughts leave dust in his eyes and mouth, nestled in his hair that grows too long now. But nothing’s as horrid as the molten lava that shapes the terrain occasionally that fills him with a fear he’s fighting to lose.

And yet, only a small journey away, there are children with flowers woven into their hair and young adults chattering excitedly about romance and new places to visit in the galaxy and travelling to and from the city, one of the kinder portions of the planet. And there are women in light dresses, thin pale gowns against sparkling, smooth skin. The ones who are young, like him, scatter in his presence like flowers bent by the wind: repelled. They leave only their scent in the air, that aroma of sweet perfumes that fills his head with nonsensical urges.

For him, looking at you is like gazing at the stars. He appreciates you, is fond of you, and he has no reason to look at or away from you, but he looks anyway. And it’s the same for you. Yet he is alike and yet so unlike any other star; his gravity is the only one that matters. He draws you in and, though your eyes burn and you have to fight the urge to flee, you lay nestled in his flames. Most importantly, like stars, you’re both unknown to each other’s curious palms. You’ve never spoken.

Kylo stares unabashedly at you as you pass him in your herd. He hates the herd. He hates the smiling, young faces all clustered together like cattle that, for some unfathomable reason, keep him at bay. His face is wet, his skin glistening with sweat, and he stinks, but nothing thwarts his confidence like your companions and the way they only need to glance once at him and follow his gaze before they tighten around you and quicken their pace as if there’s anywhere to go in the market. It’s a shame, he thinks, because your dress is so very thin and tempting today. He clenches his jaw and swoons mentally at the scent left behind, but lets you fade out of his vision all the same.

“There’s a festival tonight,” a man says, seeming to materialize beside Kylo.

The man is shorter than him and covered in white garbs from head to toe with only his eyes and his hands bare and visible. Though his tone is light, his body is tense and he stands as if he expects to be attacked. Foreign, but not so foreign that he seems too different from the natives.

“I’m not interested in such mindlessness,” Kylo replies, gruffly.

“Is that so?” The man makes a small noise of feigned disbelief. “And here I was thinking I caught you gawking…”

“I wasn’t _gawking_!” Kylo’s fists shook as he turned toward the man, fuming. His cheeks burned.

“No? Only lurking, I suppose.”

Kylo goes to the festival. The air is alive with music. From any corner, the world is filled with people filled with happiness and connected as if sewn together. They kiss, they caress, they share loving glances, and he watches this all with a chest that grows steadily colder as his throat constricts. He accepts the drinks offered, though he shouldn’t, and doesn’t attempt to hold on to his sobriety. If he can’t make it back to his cave, so be it; there’s a hotel somewhere, a friendly grandmother’s mat to rest on. Slowly, he grows intoxicated.

And his existence seems less dismal for the longest moments. On the one hand, he’s far from his goal. On the other, he’s progressing quickly and growing more accustomed to his training. And there’s you, too. You’re an object to be held and admired.

He learns that you’re younger than he thought when you pour in with the others entering adulthood in that thin gown that he knows he can tear with ease. He likes the light reflected on your cheeks, the innocence in your eyes that seem to search for someone all night as he keeps himself hidden. The young adults dance and the elders trade stories and advice. There are tears of joy and words tossed thick with nostalgia, but the air is weightless tonight just outside of the glow of light.

When you break off from the herd, he moves to follow you, but stumbles and thinks better of it. Though he regrets the missed opportunity, he writes it off as a moment of weakness and retires instead to a hotel room. But he can’t shake the image of you from his mind. He can’t shake his longing to remove that thin layer from between you.

Later, Kylo dreams true dreams. They take over the place of nightmares and the feeling of unclean hands that can’t be washed free. Instead, he dreams of light filtering through heavy, green leaves and light laughter. He dreams of a bridge: sturdy and arching over a stream. He dreams of skies overrun by the kind of clouds children yearn to run their fingers through. Most importantly, he dreams of you. You come in pieces to him. A smile here. A fingertip there. Your knee. The curve of your elbow.

In the morning, though, he wakes to that familiar cool voice in his head reminding him of his loyalties and exactly what he has to lose should he become weak. It’s too soon, the voice reminds him, to be distracted by pretty things and passion. It’s too soon to be smitten and dream like a young girl of a lover. He must be strong. He must not allow such delicate things to sway his reason. They’re already working against him; his inability to remain sober the night before an example.

So Kylo returns to the place where the scent of flames never escapes him and he focuses on every task to keep from thinking of you or anything like you. He locks you away like some doll and his ambition consumes him with each praise earned from Snoke. He whittles away the fragments of his former self until only Kylo Ren remains: unyielding, unwavering. Kylo works until he becomes the formidable shadow he was always warned to never become.

Each night, he reaches out toward the light and dark sides of the force and tries to find harmony in the sensation of being torn apart. He can literally feel their tugging. They’re the only opposites that don’t seem to attract each other and he’s not sure why. All he knows is that somehow he must force them together without surrendering to either. He must take the strengths of each and become the point of neutrality. He must become nothing to achieve greatness, but the light terrifies him because it reminds him of instability.

It reminds him of how he yearned as a young boy for true understanding of himself and the world around him. When he was ridden by youth with round cheeks and sparkling eyes and his inability to recognize boundaries seemed like a relatively small issue in the scheme of things, he’d felt so small. There were always whispers. There was always the lingering gaze of his mother staring at him like he was someone else she knew a long time ago and he never seemed to miss the dread at the corners of her smile.

And there was his father, unbelieving even in the face of proof. Han could never wrap his head around it and Kylo Ren’s former self had known that. Ben Solo could hear before he understood that he could and he felt the unwitting loathing his father felt whenever Leia disappeared with Luke to speak conspiratorially of the past. He blamed her at times for their son. If she just pretended the boy was normal… If she didn’t send him away… If she raised him to follow her path instead of her brother’s or worse, he father’s… Han had been convinced he’d be more fulfilled if Ben had been better with repairs than the force that he still couldn’t understand.

Kylo remembers waking with wet cheeks and hates himself and that weakness whenever he thinks his current situation is too great of a pain and not worth that goal that waivers just out of reach. The goal, though, seems to be worth the suffering. Why complain now that he’s come so far? Why stumble now?

Some nights, he wishes he’d found out earlier about his lineage. He can’t shake the regret of not immersing himself in Luke’s training earlier, though he understands why he didn’t. Every session seemed to push his father further away. The stronger he became, the greater the unease grew. Strength was encouraged as long as it was utilised for the right cause, but he could never commit where he felt unwanted and feared. His peers had admired him once, but quickly grew to fear or hate him when he took things too far. It was okay to pry when someone asked, but not okay to mention certain information like how this one thinks of that one or what these two did while everyone else practiced. Who would crave returning to that instability and fear?

Still, he wonders some nights what he would do if he simply stopped now. In a way, he’d be back where he started, yet not at all. Now there’s a solid reason to shun and punish him. Kylo Ren is a murderer who has stolen the lives of too many innocents. He’s young, but not young enough to be called naive.

 _You_ ’re naive with nineteen full years under your belt and the nervous excitement he felt roll off of you in waves the night of the festival as you’d searched without meaning to for his face. You’re naive for desiring a stranger for his face alone, but such innocence is another reason for his poisonous affection.

The night before he breaks and ventures into town, he dreams of a faceless lover. His hands sink into their body when tries to touch them and they melt beneath his digits into pools of clear water that he tries desperately to hold and caress as one does a lover, but he’s left with a feeling of anxiety bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He wants to hold you, but you’re water on his path. He can admire you, but you’ll either slip away or drown him. Still, he looks for you in town. But you’re not there. He hears from an older man that you left with the herd to do whatever it is that young people do; youth was such a long time ago.

  


Snoke relocates Kylo Ren after he finish the first phase of his training. The young man is reunited with his knights with a simple order to spread the doctrine and help to build the next generation, a stronger empire. So Kylo parts with his knights where he can to relax and find harmony within himself among the neverending conflict of his soul.

Kylo finds you again in his territory. He’s not sure how you got there, but doesn’t look; he only watches you from afar. It’s in a seedy establishment only for its purpose, a moral holiday, that he sees you.

You’re talking to a smoking man dressed finely.

“ _Love_ ,” the old man says, spitting out the word. “It’s only chemicals, you know. It’s just your body reacting the wrong way.”

You nod, but don’t reply. Kylo sees your arm moving, knows what you’re doing under the table.

“My first wife was a romantic. She told me, she said to me, ‘I think we’re destined to be together’ when we first met. When she left me, she said ‘there’s no such thing’. I thought it was stupid and she was stupid. Silly thing… It’s real or it isn’t. Was she just saying what she thought she should?” The man slouches in his seat and tosses you an appreciative glance at the sensation of your skin against his.

You smile and try not to think of your twisting stomach. You came here initially to marry a man your parents thought would bring you safety, but he used you and left you to your own devices. So you took the only job you could get: working in a seedy club that caters to its customers’ every need.

“My second wife almost made me believe,” the man continues. “Very young, like you, sweetheart. Yes, and gorgeous. We fucked and fucked and fucked and I bought her jewelry and she wrote - she fancied herself to be a writer, thought she’d be known across the galaxy - she wrote poetry about me. It was pink and fancy and sweet. She had an affair with the gardener, the maid’s son. I stopped employing humans after that, let her go. Love’s not real; she just wanted money. Greedy bitch…”

You nod, unsure of what else to do. As long as he doesn’t get rowdy, you don’t care about what he says. Kylo, though, hangs on to every word.

“What about you, darlin’, you think love exists in a world where you’re paid to get fucked by men like me?” he asks, smirking.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, and Kylo shrinks a bit at your words, trying to recall the innocent girl from not so long ago.

When you talk to Kylo for the first time, you’re filled with a euphoria that intoxicates him. Even though you know who he is now, you’re happy to see a face that brings to mind memories of the days when you trusted people blindly, when you thought those feelings of excitement and anxiety in his presence were a manifestation of love beginning. And you wish you weren’t so cynical when you realize with a bit of disappointment that seeing him here ruins your ideal of the man.

It’s his third time there and he mentions that after you introduce yourself. You blame his stiffness on his drinking, but he’s not drunk. He stands almost too close to you and his gaze is too harsh for small talk so you invite him to one of the rooms, thinking he might be warmer somewhere private. When he asks how much, you try not to show your disappoint as you rattle of prices for different services.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” you ask.

“Treat me as you would any other customer,” Kyo says.

There’s an air of awkwardness between you in the room. He’s been closed off since you formally introduced yourself and admitted your crush before you could stop yourself; you were too excited to see a familiar face to keep quiet.

“But you’re not like them,” you say, shaking your head as a shy smile plays across your lips.

“Is that so?” Kylo crosses his arms over his chests.

“Not the you I remember. You were too shy to even talk to me.”

“No, I wasn’t,” he says, softly. “I just knew the people wouldn’t take too kindly to me perverting you.”

“Let’s not talk about this.” His words leave you nervous and excited like before, but shy.

“This is what I want. I want to talk about what you brought up.” He sips his drink, his eyes never leaving yours. When he licks his pink lips, you swear you can feel it in the way your body warms as if he’s suggested more than he has.

“Perverting me?”

“Ripping your dresses and taking you wherever I saw you.” It’s an exaggeration to an extent. For a while, he didn’t even understand how he felt about you and he only began to sexualize you toward the end. Suddenly shy, he changes the subject, “And you, what do you do here?”

“I talk to customers and sometimes I touch them for a tip, but they’re not allowed to touch me,” you say, averting your gaze.

“Don’t you think I’m vulgar?”

“What?”

“What I told you.”

“Oh. No, not really,” you say. “I’ve heard worse. From you, it’s different.”

“But it’s not poetry.” Kylo is tempted to imitate your smile, but he doesn’t want to risk ruining the moment with an expression.

“It doesn’t have to be poetry.” You smile.

“Take off your clothes.”

So you undress. But it’s not because he’s a customer and this is your job, but because you want him to see you as you are. Perhaps, you’ve wanted him to since you saw him. To be clear, this isn’t love and you know that. You don’t love this man anymore than you love a passing stranger, but you're somehow fond of him, oh his presence, and you feel he’s the same toward you. But this meeting is all about a desire to sate the body’s needs quickly, efficiently.

And then he surprises you enough to paint your confusion across your face. Kylo turns away from you, his cheeks flushed when your chest is bare to him. He clenches his jaw and fights himself in his head because this is a good thing, but it’s not. It’s fine now to indulge, but he shouldn’t. It’s better to purge these feelings and pass easily through catharsis, but he’s nervous and unsure. Which is all the more reason to continue: to broaden his knowledge. He’s touched others before, over clothes and in the dark while exchanging clumsy kisses, but never pressed bare skin to bare skin and hoped against all odds that he was giving someone else pleasure.

You tell yourself he simply doesn’t want to break rules, never thinking he might be more selfish than you know him to be. But you don’t know him at all.

“You can touch me,” you say, hoping to break the man’s reverie.

He murmurs your name, repeats it like it’s a curse, and then whispers it like a plea.

So you take Kylo’s hand in yours, overlooking the way he pulls away at first. You caress his fingers and sigh, learning every joint and scar on this one pale hand that is so large compared to your own. Yet innocent or at least seemingly so.

“You don’t have to,” you say, after a long silence.

“You’re treating me like a child,” Kylo snaps, glaring at you.

“I don’t mean to.” You smile reassuringly, squeezing his hand.

“I’ve done this before,” he says, “and I don’t need you to hold my hand through it.”

He’s harsh and clumsy in his haste and gropes you to prove that he can, but he seems apologetic when you embrace him simply to be close to him. His chest rises and falls against yours and his arms are limp. Bewildered, he doesn’t know how to proceed so he doesn’t. He swallows his words and takes things at your pace, amazed by you. In vain, he hopes that his awe isn’t written across his face when you lose your garbs and stand bare before him. When you kiss him, his world tilts and he’s awakened. So this is the good of the light? His previous fears seem so silly. And then they don’t. He’s intoxicated.

The next time you see the man, he’s waiting outside of the establishment in his training clothes. His eyes are cool and his face is stone, but he doesn’t seem any more aggressive than usual. The night is cold is it always is and you want nothing more than to be inside again, but you stand and talk to him anyway.

That night when you retire to your apartment, you kiss and you touch each other, but you don’t want anything more. Your stomach turns pleasantly with just his presence and you hope your feelings are mirrored in him. But then he takes you suddenly and quickly in your bed, muttering harsh words into your ear while he holds you down and makes your body accept him. The experience lights a flame in you as fleeting as it is and you’re amazed by him. Wasn’t he shy only days ago?

His visits stop immediately, though, when Snoke tells him they need to because when the question is loyalty and his choices are his devotions and you, he chooses his cause over you because you’re only an object to him, just something he wanted to and did possess briefly. And, perhaps, he’s afraid of what it means to be intoxicated by this warmth more than he is afraid of losing you. And more likely he’s terrified of slowing down now for a lover when he’s already come so far, suffered so much. But his chest is cold when he realizes you won’t miss him after he’s done what he’s destined to.

 


End file.
